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I saw a thread for a new Say Anything record, and I came here to say 'why hasn't Max just given up already?!' Then I read that letter and thought, 'Yeah, it's probably a good thing he decided to give up, finally'

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Took out "Hahaha cracking up at the last comment." Since the last comment was edited to remove the funny joke calling out Drew Beringer and Jason from Absolutepunk.

-edit.

Letter seemed super cringey and unecessary like if you're an adult and still feel the need to write a 5 page diatribe desperately trying to distance yourself from a character you wrote about in your early twenties and be like "OMG that guy on the phone with the girl who touched herself was SO not me guys I was a virgin til 30!! And also I'm gay kind of but not so I couldn't be that emo guy from IARB" just so weird.

I'm just a straight white dude so what do I know, but damn man, I'm kind of tired of people thinking they're so woke because they think dudes can be hot too. Like damn man Ryan Gosling is a fucking hunk and I'd probably squeal like a school girl if I saw Cillian Murphy on the street but I'm not writing 5 pages about how fucking woke I am because I'm secure enough to just not be a homophobe lol.

Maybe I took the whole letter thing the wrong way but every part of it kind of put me off. All the apologizing and praising his wife for putting up with him going all "method Heath Ledger" just read like coattail hanging weirdness. No doubt the guy has personal issues and all and I can respect someone dealing with that stuff but... Yeah the whole thing just read super off to me.

Letter seemed super cringey and unecessary like if you're an adult and still feel the need to write a 5 page diatribe desperately trying to distance yourself from a character you wrote about in your early twenties and be like "OMG that guy on the phone with the girl who touched herself was SO not me guys I was a virgin til 30!! And also I'm gay kind of but not so I couldn't be that emo guy from IARB" just so weird.

I'm just a straight white dude so what do I know, but damn man, I'm kind of tired of people thinking they're so woke because they think dudes can be hot too. Like damn man Ryan Gosling is a fucking hunk and I'd probably squeal like a school girl if I saw Cillian Murphy on the street but I'm not writing 5 pages about how fucking woke I am because I'm secure enough to just not be a homophobe lol.

Maybe I took the whole letter thing the wrong way but every part of it kind of put me off. All the apologizing and praising his wife for putting up with him going all "method Heath Ledger" just read like coattail hanging weirdness. No doubt the guy has personal issues and all and I can respect someone dealing with that stuff but... Yeah the whole thing just read super off to me.

As a gay woman, it’s really not always as simple as “I’m secure enough”. You being able to appreciate an attractive person of the same gender is really not the same as someone struggling with their sexuality.

As a gay woman, it’s really not always as simple as “I’m secure enough”. You being able to appreciate an attractive person of the same gender is really not the same as someone struggling with their sexuality.

Right, like I said, I'm definitely no expert on these matters. It is just confusing, at least to me, when someone poses an argument against categorical definitions of "straight" vs "bi" vs "gay" but then uses that same vocabulary to describe themselves.

"I'm gay, but people don't think I'm gay because I'm also straight and married a woman and I'm madly in love with her but I'm definitely gay too but people don't believe that I'm gay" is just... Odd. Part of me is just wondering why it even matters - can't he just like who he likes without trying to label everything and defend past lyrics and attitudes?

The whole "I'm gay" thing seems a response to trying to defend what he sees as inappropriate or mysoginistic lyrics\themes in IARB. Likely that's not the case in his real life, it's just how it came across in the body of the "letter".

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To be clear, I did get a little off track in my replies. I have a much more palpable reaction to the odd stance of trying to reconcile himself against IARB lyrics, than how someone decides to try to define their sexuality. I guess I'm in the "it's undefinable" camp, but firmly enough that I don't then immediately say "it's undefinable, but if I had to define it...."

Feeling as though you need to publically prove you're not some character you created 15 years ago is more baffling, though.

Feeling as though you need to publically prove you're not some character you created 15 years ago is more baffling, though.

I don't know if I agree completely... His entire career post-ISARB has been fans telling him to make ISARB again. He used to say all the time that fans would write that they wish he wasn't on meds or doing more drugs so he can write an album like ISARB again... Perhaps it's time he said it was about this character. I can imagine it's hard to say, "Hey, you know those lyrics you feel so deeply about because they relate to you so much? That was just a story."

I don't know if I agree completely... His entire career post-ISARB has been fans telling him to make ISARB again. He used to say all the time that fans would write that they wish he wasn't on meds or doing more drugs so he can write an album like ISARB again... Perhaps it's time he said it was about this character. I can imagine it's hard to say, "Hey, you know those lyrics you feel so deeply about because they relate to you so much? That was just a story."

I see what you're saying, and yeah it's unfortunate if that's true, that people wished he was more fucked up so he'd write songs more like IARB.

Maybe my feelings are less towards him because he had to clarify it and more just towards the fact that he had to clarify it at all. No denying there are tons and tons of people out there who are absolutely incapable of separating life from art\fiction. I remember Conor Oberst having to explain in interviews years ago that not everything in every song happened to him or even to people he knew, sometimes they were just stories.

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Yeah really surprised to hear people dishing In Defense. At the very least it has so many "cameos" on it. Gerard, Chris Carraba, Haley, Chris Conley, Matt Skiba, Adam and Fred of TBS.... I find the album worth going back to for that alone because it gives you a weird image of where the SA was at and the Scene at the time. And the album is just good on it's own.

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Yeah really surprised to hear people dishing In Defense. At the very least it has so many "cameos" on it. Gerard, Chris Carraba, Haley, Chris Conley, Matt Skiba, Adam and Fred of TBS.... I find the album worth going back to for that alone because it gives you a weird image of where the SA was at and the Scene at the time. And the album is just good on it's own.

In Defense had a lot of filler but if you boil it away it had (at the least) 12 songs very close to the same level as IARB.

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I would consider Say Anything to be my favorite band and I think IARB might be the greatest album ever recorded, to my ears. I've been able to find something to love in every release, but to me IARB had a youthful magic to it that can't be replicated and I've had no desire to see it replicated. So as someone who loves that album but just sees it as something grand in the past, this new concept feels a little like a Sicario 2 situation. Did we really need a sequel to something that stands alone? Will it even feel like a sequel other than the forced psychological connection? Is this going to embarrass everyone involved 5 years from now?

That said, the song is fine. Just fine. I won't even touch the goodbye letter, but it didn't read like something written by a healthy person and that bums me out. I've accepted that every SA album is totally different and hoped to hear ten more years of Bemis music, but if this is the end then so be it. I just hope it's a fitting one and not an awkward one.

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IN Defense is one of my 10 favorite albums of all time but the Self titled and IARB are both incredible as well. The last few albums are whatever . But I have seen them play 3 times in 4 years and they basically only play songs from the first 2 albums which makes sense as they know what people like.